Fast Trip
I'm back.
I left Wednesday morning - rather, Continental left two hours late on Wednesday, so I left that afternoon, really. Got in to Newark at 9 and found the rental cars very hard to find. Finally got on the road at about 10, and got to Factoryville, PA, at 12.30 a.m.
I know travelogues about flying adventures leave a lot of people cold and pretty quickly glazed over, so I will keep it to myself. Mostly.
Thursday we got out of Factoryville in Gordon's totally refurbished P210 Silver Eagle at about 1pm. I flew it down to Wilkes Barre to get Gordon, who returned the rental car. I went with the factory pilot so I could get some intensive training in the behavior of the airplane. It's a great airplane, but it's got a whole new set of peculiarities that I need to learn.
So we got Gordon, then flew to Indianapolis and dropped the factory guy off so he could fly back to PA. Gordon and I then went on to bucolic Vincennes, IN, and stayed the night with his sister in-law.
Yesterday Gordon and I were in or around the airplane for 11 hours, flying for over nine hours. That is a very long time to be in a cockpit. We stopped in Norfolk, NE, then went on to Riverton, WY. Riverton was the most interesting stop - it was virtually no-wind all the way in. And then five minutes out, the wind picked up. We landed in wind gusting over 45 miles per hour. It was very hairy. Watched two other big aircraft come in right after us, and they had a real time of it. Freak wind event - though I have knowledge that it's more likely that no-wind events are freakier in Riverton. I can say that it blows in Riverton.
We got out of Riverton and flew the rest of the way home. The weather went crap just after Jackson Hole, WY, and we spent a lot of time in the clouds, picked up ice, then popped out over Walla Walla, WA. And it was gorgeous the rest of the way in. Unbelievable sunset as we passed Mt. Rainier into Seattle.
(And I said that was the short version. Sorry.)
I left Wednesday morning - rather, Continental left two hours late on Wednesday, so I left that afternoon, really. Got in to Newark at 9 and found the rental cars very hard to find. Finally got on the road at about 10, and got to Factoryville, PA, at 12.30 a.m.
I know travelogues about flying adventures leave a lot of people cold and pretty quickly glazed over, so I will keep it to myself. Mostly.
Thursday we got out of Factoryville in Gordon's totally refurbished P210 Silver Eagle at about 1pm. I flew it down to Wilkes Barre to get Gordon, who returned the rental car. I went with the factory pilot so I could get some intensive training in the behavior of the airplane. It's a great airplane, but it's got a whole new set of peculiarities that I need to learn.
So we got Gordon, then flew to Indianapolis and dropped the factory guy off so he could fly back to PA. Gordon and I then went on to bucolic Vincennes, IN, and stayed the night with his sister in-law.
Yesterday Gordon and I were in or around the airplane for 11 hours, flying for over nine hours. That is a very long time to be in a cockpit. We stopped in Norfolk, NE, then went on to Riverton, WY. Riverton was the most interesting stop - it was virtually no-wind all the way in. And then five minutes out, the wind picked up. We landed in wind gusting over 45 miles per hour. It was very hairy. Watched two other big aircraft come in right after us, and they had a real time of it. Freak wind event - though I have knowledge that it's more likely that no-wind events are freakier in Riverton. I can say that it blows in Riverton.
We got out of Riverton and flew the rest of the way home. The weather went crap just after Jackson Hole, WY, and we spent a lot of time in the clouds, picked up ice, then popped out over Walla Walla, WA. And it was gorgeous the rest of the way in. Unbelievable sunset as we passed Mt. Rainier into Seattle.
(And I said that was the short version. Sorry.)
posted by C at 11:01 AM
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